Chapter 76: The Councilman's Envelope

I put the letter on the kitchen table and did not open it.

Maeve came out of her room with her shawl around her shoulders and looked at the seal and then at me.

"That is the chief clerk's hand," she said.

"It is."

"Then open it."

"Not yet." I put the kettle on the stove. "If I open it now I will read it and I will be angry and then I will go into that tribunal angry and the Alphas will see a Gamma who cannot keep her face still. I will open it at the tribunal and I will open it in front of them."

Maeve looked at me for a moment.

"All right," she said.

We went to the pack house at nine o'clock with the file from the courthouse and the register and the fourteen photographs and the box of cold stones, and the pack square was full and the seven Alphas were in their chairs and Harlan was at the end of the row.

Ada brought her hand down on the table.

"The tribunal resumes," she said. "The Gamma will take the chair."

I sat down in the chair in front of the table.

"Gamma," Ada said. "You have been up all night and you have brought a file from the courthouse and a letter from Boise. Which do you want to give us first?"

I put the letter on the table.

"This came at dawn," I said. "It is addressed to the tribunal and it has the chief clerk's hand on it and the seal of the Council on it. I have not opened it. I wanted the Alphas to open it."

Ada took the letter and broke the seal and unfolded it and read it. She read it twice. Then she passed it to the Alpha beside her and did not say anything.

The letter went down the row. Each Alpha read it and passed it on and did not say anything. When it came to Harlan he read it and put it down and looked at me.

"Gamma," Ada said. "The chief clerk has written to this tribunal and has offered to resign his position and to surrender himself to the Alphas and to give evidence against the Council of Alphas in exchange for his life." She put her hand on the table. "He says the Council has been collecting land from Lunas under forged trial claims since 1902 and he says the register in the vault is the proof. He says he is prepared to name every clerk and every Alpha who signed a false claim in eighty-five years."

The square was silent.

"He is trying to make a deal," I said.

"He is trying to save his life," Ada said. "And he is the only man alive who can name every name in that register without reading it page by page. That is worth something to this tribunal."

"It is worth something," I said. "But it is not worth everything. He ordered the cull order that killed my brother. He countersigned the report and sealed it. He wrote the wire that told Rourke to go ahead with the cull against the Alphas' ruling." I put my hand flat on the table. "If he is going to give evidence, he gives evidence. But he does not get to resign and go home and keep his pension and his house. He answers for my brother."

Ada looked at me for a long moment.

"That is for the tribunal to decide," she said. "And the tribunal will decide it after it has heard the rest of the evidence." She looked at the file in my hand. "What is in the file?"

I opened it.

"The county record on my brother's death," I said. "There is a second examination in it. It was requested four days after he died by Clara Renn of the mill road and it was signed by the coroner and it says there were two wounds on my brother's body. One in the chest and one in the back. The one in the chest was made by a blade and it was small and clean and it did not kill him. The one in the back was made by a blade and it ran from the spine outward and it was the one that killed him." I looked up. "And there is a thing about the second wound that nobody has said out loud. It is in the shape of it. It is not a stab. It is a cut that goes from the spine out and it is the same shape and the same length as the scar on the back of the wolf."

The square moved.

"The wolf did not make that wound," I said. "The wolf took that wound. He took it off my brother's body when the curse moved into him on the night my brother died, and he has been carrying it for four months, and it is the shape of the blade that killed him." I put my hand on the file. "And the blade that killed him is the knife with the silver handle that was found in the Beta's shed with the initials E. R. cut into it. Erik Renn's knife. Erik Renn's hand. Erik Renn's second wound."

Ada looked at the file.

"Where is the knife?" she said.

I put my hand in my jacket and took it out and unwrapped it and put it on the table.

The square was silent.

Ada picked it up and turned it over and looked at the letters on the blade and put it down again.

"Gamma," she said. "You have brought this tribunal a file and a knife and a register and a letter. You have brought us a story that goes back eighty-five years. What do you want this tribunal to do?"

I stood up.

"I want this tribunal to rule that the founders' bargain is void," I said. "I want it to rule that the boundary deed of 1891 is a forgery and that the land of this territory belongs to the Luna's line. I want it to rule that the Council of Alphas has been collecting land from Lunas under false claims since 1902 and that every claim in that vault is void. And I want it to rule that the men who killed my brother answer for it."

Ada looked at me.

"And the land?" she said. "If the land belongs to the Luna's line, it belongs to you and Hannah and Arthur Renn. What are you going to do with it?"

I stood in front of the seven Alphas with the whole pack behind me.

"I do not know," I said. "I have been up all night and I have not decided and I am not going to stand in front of this tribunal and promise a thing I have not thought through." I looked at the pack. "But I am going to say one thing now and I am going to say it in front of everybody. Whatever I decide, no wolf in this territory is going to lose the ground he farms. Not one. Not the Hendersons and not the Corrigans and not Harold and not Mrs. Pike. If the land comes to me, it comes with the wolves who have worked it."

The square was quiet.

And then Mrs. Pike stood up at the back and said, "I have a thing to say about the feed prices."

Ada turned.

"Say it," she said.

Mrs. Pike came forward.

"The co-op has been buying feed from the Council since 1973," she said. "The price went up every year and the Council said it was the market and we believed it. But I kept the tickets. I have kept every ticket from every wagon that came into my farm for six years and I have them in a box at home." She put a folded paper on the table. "And there is a thing in the tickets that nobody has looked at. The price of feed went up on the same day every year. The same day. The twelfth of June." She looked at me. "The same day the cull order was written."

I sat down in the chair.

"Mrs. Pike," I said. "Go home and get the box."

She went.

And while she was gone I sat in the chair in front of the seven Alphas with the knife on the table and the file in my hand and the mark on my shoulder warm and steady, and I thought about the feed prices and the Council and the twelfth of June.

The twelfth of June was the day the cull order was written and the day the first payment came into the co-op ledger and the day the Council raised the price of feed.

It was the day the Council began.